Off Wing Opinion

Looks like the NHLPA is planning a meeting to update players on the status of the non-existent negotiations with ownership:

While no meetings are planned to discuss a new contract with NHL officials, Senators centre Mike Fisher told the Sun yesterday he expects the union will hold a get-together with players "in the next month or so."

Most of the communication with the players has been done through the union's website, but it wouldn't be unusual for the NHLPA to bring the players to Toronto for an update on the lockout.

Sources say some players have even called NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow directly for information.

Communicating through the NHLPA Web site? What kind of a joke is that? In light of that fact, I'm sure some of the personal calls Mr. Goodenow fielded must have been pretty interesting.

And with no hockey to watch, Tom Benjamin has rediscovered baseball. NHL marketing execs should read this post closely if they value their jobs.

PJ is dutifully blogging about California college ice hockey -- one of the happy ripple effects of the emergence of the Sharks and the Ducks in the last decade. But of course, all that work those teams, as well as the Kings, have done to plant hockey in foriegn soil is rapidly going to waste.

Contemporary life moves fast. Memories are short, as are attention spans.

Soon to be added to the blogroll: Hockey Nation.

Here's another columnist reminding the world that nobody misses hockey -- again, link provided more for the edification of players and ownership than anybody else.

Thanks to Calgary defenseman Andrew Ference for the quote of the year when it comes to the lockout.

Here's some non-lockout related news from Stan Fischler:

Hard To Believe Dep't: The Boston Red Sox are thinking about the installation of an ice rink in the Fenway Park outfield for late-Fall-Winter use.

Might we eventually see a Heritage Classic matchup between Boston and Montreal at Fenway Park in January? The league ought to be thinking about it, and a few thousand more gimmicks, if it wants to rekindle fan interest after this labor debacle.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2004 at 6:11 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

SI.com has started a Lockout Log. Thanks to Steve Ovadia for the link.

For all of your Czech Extraleague needs, be sure to check out Jes Golbez and The Rodent. And be sure to read this entry from Jes on Juraj Kolnik's retreat over some comments that didn't go over well with the NHLPA.

It's scary what those two know about the Czech League. I wish I could get into it.

Brian Boucher has signed with HV 71 of the Swedish Elite League. Excluding Boucher, the official count of NHL players in Europe according to the IIHF now stands at 211. Here's more from USA Today.

Unfortunately, some of the folks who used to rely on the NHL for a living can't afford to pick up and move to Europe to find another job.

Jeff and Alanah skipped last week's quote sheet, but I'm in full concert with this sentiment:

It's been a bad week, missing the opening games of the NHL season. Reading about the business of hockey, rather than about hockey itself, is really starting to piss us off.

Which is why it's getting tougher and tougher putting together Rink Notes. At this point of the season, I fully expected Ottawa's Jason Spezza to be off to a torrid start, something which would give me an excuse to bash Islanders GM Mike Milbury.

Here in Washington, Tony Kornheiser has finally turned his attention to the lockout:

[T]he Washington Capitals were a Big Deal in this city for a long time. They're one of the sports anchors here: the Redskins, the Wizards, the Caps. Maybe they never won the Stanley Cup, but they got to the finals in 1998. The last time the Redskins got to the Super Bowl was 1992. The last time the Wizards actually won a playoff game was 1988. By comparison, the Caps are a dynasty.

But the Caps go out and nobody seems to notice. If there was a strike or a lockout in football, folks would be foaming, fuming and fussing about it. There would be editorials in the newspapers. TV camera crews would be all over town checking the pulse of angry fans. The same with baseball. My gosh, the last time there was a baseball strike, people wanted to throw players in jail for tearing the fabric of America. You take football and baseball off the shelves and there'll be arguments at every water cooler in America over who's more greedy, the players or the owners.

But hockey goes out, and, um, what? Tony, did you say something?

Hey, Tony! Mr. Kornheiser, over here!

Want to stage a quickie tour for your band? Looks like now would be a good time.

And finally, shame on me for not seeing the comedic possibilities inherent in getting Don Cherry all the votes he needs to be elected as the Greatest Canadian.

And for those of you who might be interested, if this American had a vote, I'd choose Alexander Graham Bell (who might have even made the list if he had never invented the telephone), followed by Frederick Banting and Terry Fox.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 20th, 2004 at 12:59 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lots of great stuff over at Tom Benjamin's place, including speculation on how the lockout might actually be a two-phased plan to declare a labor impasse,

And BTW, the CBC has nominated Don Cherry as a finalist as one of the greatest Canadians in history. Tom is astonished, and even a Cherry fan like myself is more than a bit taken aback.

I figured that if you were going to take another figure from the hockey world, it would have been a coach -- like maybe Scotty Bowman? But putting a media personality like Cherry on the same list as the man who discovered insulin and the inventor of the telephone seems a little silly.

With Hockey Night in Canada on hiatus, it was Movie Night in Canada last Saturday -- and some folks think the CBC ought to be doing something else.

There might be no hockey at MSG, but there's a lawsuit.

And with Dwayne Roloson arriving in Finland, the total count of NHL players in Europe has reached 208.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2004 at 6:47 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

With NHL games nowhere in sight, defending NCAA champ Denver University is taking advantage. In Philadelphia, Comcast Sports Net will be putting the minor league Phantoms on the air.

With a Canadian television deal in hand, the AHL will begin its own season next Wednesday, and will be utilizing some, but not all, of the rule changes (registration required) the NHL asked for before the season began.

Here's an idea: as an NHL Center Ice subscriber, I've already pre-paid for the 2004-05 season. Instead of keeping my money and just sitting on it, would it kill the league to fire up their satellite capacity (which, as I've pointed out, I've already paid for), and air a slate of AHL and NCAA hockey in the place of the NHL?

Yes, it would probably cost more than letting the league simply sit on its hands (and my money). But they took our money even though they knew they had no intention of starting the season on time. Think of it as a goodwill gesture, one that would purchase the league more than a little goodwill with their biggest supporters.

If the only way you're willing to build support is through press releases and media interviews, then don't be surprised when fans sit on their hands when you come back.

Outside the swamps of Jersey, the Newark City Council approved a downtown redevelopment plan that includes an 18,000 seat arena for the Devils:

Before the 6-3 vote, residents of the city who addressed the council at a public hearing were divided over whether Newark's $210 million contribution to the project would be better spent on schools, roads and city services.

The answer to that question is yes. And considering that Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek is a former member of the executive committee at Lehman Brothers, one would think he'd know something about private financing. In addition, the state government already pays the Devils $3 million annually to stay in the state, whether they play or not -- something some state officials think is a travesty that ought to be ended.

A group of French-Canadian NHL players are conducting a barnstorming tour for charity across the province of Quebec.

With Richard Zednik and Alex Tanguay the latest NHL players to sign with European clubs, the International Ice Hockey Federation reports that 194 members of the NHLPA are currently playing in Europe.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 8th, 2004 at 6:52 am by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Mike Brophy: "Bring me the head of Gary Bettman!":

Bettman's entire reputation is riding on this CBA negotiation. And because he has done such a poor job of running the league since taking over in February of 1993, it won't be enough for the former basketball executive to simply get his salary cap.

To save face, Bettman must get the deal done quickly. He needs a buzzer-beater.

With no NHL hockey being played, we have time to reflect on what has transpired since Bettman became league commissioner. And it's not good.

Including a salary structure where the average NHL player makes $500,000 more per year than the average NFL player. To make matters worse, the NHL has guaranteed contracts, driving costs even higher.

But that's not the nub of the problem, as this piece from last month in Forbes points out:

The NHL's problem isn't the expense side of the income statement, it's the revenue side. Each hockey team received $4 million per year from The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ) as part of the league's just-completed national TV deal, with games airing on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC. Compare this to the NFL's deal with Disney, Fox Entertainment (nyse: FOX - news - people ) and Viacom (nyse: VIA.B - news - people ), where each team earned $81 million last year. Instead of building up a $300 million war chest for the lockout as the owners have done, they should have used that money to develop new revenue streams.

This my friends, is the nub of the problem. Why is the television contract so small? Because the NHL has failed utterly as a televised entertainment product. In turn, the lack of a plan to develop an alternate revenue stream is a grand indictment of the dearth of intelligence and creativity when it comes to marketing the game.

Another question to consider: Bettman undertook his drive to expand the league in order to create a national television footprint, and hence increase the revenue stream from a national television contract. It's clear that effort has failed. And now that it's time to clean up the mess, might it not be time to consider whether or not some of those expansion franchises should be eliminated? Discuss.

Without training camp to keep him occupied, Sabres forward Adam Mair got into a bar fight. Second-year defenseman Brooks Orpik is bored too.

Join the club, buddy.

Meet Boston-based NHL goal judge Ed Quin:

"The fans don't care much now, because of the Sox and Patriots," Quin says. "But in January, if the Celts are going bad, the fans will miss the Bruins. But this [lockout] is going to be long and dirty."

Here's news for everyone -- the Celtics are going to be great this year. Bank on it.

UPDATE: More from Brophy:

NHL hockey used to be the best game in the world. It is not any longer. The game I grew up loving is sick and needs immediate attention. But is Bettman the man to make things right? Given his track record, the answer is no.

Maybe what the game needs, more than a salary cap, is somebody else running the show.

Something to think about.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2004 at 12:45 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wayne Gretzky was in Las Vegas on Saturday night, as he turned up at Ceaser's Palance with his daughter Paulina in tow to watch Ontario-native Syd Vanderpool's unsuccessful attempt to deny Jeff Lacy the IBF Super Middleweight title.

Vanderpool had asked Gretzky if Paulina would sing the Canadian National Anthem before the match, and the proud Daddy was happy to comply. Showtime's Jim Grey buttonholed Gretzky before the match, asking him when and if the NHL would return this season. The Great One expressed optimism that an agreement could be worked out soon.

Stan Kasten, the former president of the Atlanta Thrashers, has other ideas:

[A]s long as five years ago, the N.H.L. approached the union looking for relief. The union rebuffed all entreaties, as it had a right to do. It did so again four years ago, and three years ago, and two years ago. Rather than try to negotiate with the N.H.L. to extend the agreement, as a team might try to do with a prized player approaching free agency, the union chose to play hardball. In those years, the team losses exceeded $1 billion, $500 million in the last two years alone.

Now, the union accuses the N.H.L. of planning its lockout, and in a real sense, the union is right. League officials understood that there was no legal way to escape unilaterally from the collective bargaining agreement, and they had no choice but to accept the consequences . . .

The tweaks and minor relief that the union is offering now, and that would have been so welcome five years ago, will not do the job. The losses have been too extreme, the hole too deep. In my three decades of involvement in collective bargaining in three sports, I have never seen a group of owners more prepared, more resolute and, frankly, more in need of a wholesale reformation of the system. It is clear that when the N.H.L. returns, it will be with a more rational system.

New Jersey Devils play-by-play man Mike Emrick will be working college hockey games for cable network CSTV, but he's wondering what's going to happen to bis bretheren from less successful franchises:

"Most of these guys are going to be devestated by this lockout; they're not going to be paid a dime," said Emrick. "The across-the-board fallout will hurt everyone, from play-by-play men to ticket-takers to those who work for the companies who print the game programs. Don't worry about me."

In Detroit, the Pistons think the lockout works in their favor. In Pittsbuurgh, which some folks think needs to shed a major league franchise or two, locals feel like the NHL lockout will clean them out.

If and when the lockout ends, Mario Lemieux says he's coming back for his 17th season. In Europe, the NHL player count now stands at 189 -- the Canadiens lead with nine.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2004 at 12:56 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.